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About
The Legacy
Overwatch is a multiplayer first-person shooter from the company that gave players the saga of Azeroth, Starcraft and the Diablo universe. Despite these releases coming out years ago, they are still alive and actively updated. But the developers at Blizzard wanted something new: the company does not like to experiment with new settings, preferring to transfer existing characters to new genres, worlds, and situations. The exception, perhaps, can only be a game about the three Vikings—The Lost Vikings, but this, too, was a long time ago.
The story and setting
Anyway, the company Blizzard has approached the development of Overwatch with team-specific meticulousness to details and desire to create an elaborative game universe. The player faces a choice between 21 characters who were part of the elite Overwatch unit. The task of Overwatch soldiers is to protect the Earth from conflicts and external threats. But something goes wrong, and the team of heroes breaks up. Despite the multiplayer bias, the game has a full story, it combines all the characters and maps on which the battle takes place. Since the launch, seven new characters have been added to the hero pool. Blizzard tells the story of the world of Overwatch through their characters: almost everyone has an animated short film, comparable in quality to a full meter from, for example, Pixar.
Continuous support
The game won the hearts of players around the world immediately after the launch. The figures confirm this fact: more than half a million dollars from sales and more than 40 million players. Overwatch has become an anchor project for Activision Blizzard, and the company continues to develop the project two years later, constantly offering players new maps, new characters, new themed events, and new cosmetic skins.
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System requirements for Nintendo Switch
System requirements for Xbox One
System requirements for PlayStation 4
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Overwatch reviews and comments
It seems to be getting too big for its britches. The larger the game, the harder to access.
Final Score: B+
However, then the Open Beta for Overwatch came around and, being incredibly bored at the time and not playing anything online anymore, I decided to give it a go.
I haven't stopped since, bought the game immediately at launch, 3 more times after to have 4 accounts because I'm a fucking idiot, and I still play it today, going into 2020.
In this time, a lot has happened. I briefly played the game in a Clan, just like I used to when I was actively playing Counter-Strike Source, but ended up stopping that when I didn't get along with the leader much and when I decided that the pressure of that was too much.
I've been to almost every rank, from barely Grand Master all the way down to barely Gold and currently sit at High Platinum - Low Diamond, depending on the role and the day.
Playing Comp, I have cured my irrational fear of using the Microphone while speaking English, have gotten a very chill, positive attitude, got really good at keeping toxic teams together and focused on a goal, broke, started hating the game and especially its community and since warmed up to it again and now play it not daily anymore, but still on a regular basis, having fun, doing my best, being generally positive, but stopping my session as soon as toxic players start getting to me.
I do have to say, though, that in the past few months my outlook on the game has become way more cynical. The refusal of the developers to really commit to anything in fear of humiliating specific playstyles, even those they and most of the community don't approve of, is starting to get in the way quite a bit. Balancing updates that shake up a quickly stale meta take forever now and content has been getting more and more sparse since Year 2, after they spoiled us with constant new things and promise of a lot more for the first 12 months of the game's life.
2020 isn't looking very promising in that regard either, with them focusing their work on a big, free update that they have been holding back for a while already, just to couple it with a PvE spin-off and call it a "sequel", which might be another year, or more, away still.
Things have been getting frustratingly stale and slow, and aren't looking to speed up anytime soon.
Still, the game, as a whole, means a lot to me. The first 2 years in particular were incredibly fun and a mostly positive experience. And those who haven't been playing since launch will definitely not feel as content-starved as veterans do, which is why I would still highly recommend the game to anyone even remotely interested in this kind of thing.
The game controls and feels great, visuals are clean and pleasing, character voice lines and interactions are charming as all HECC and while Competitive might not be for everyone, Quick Play, the Arcade and especially the Custom Game browser leave a lot of room for just some nice, casual fun.
It's easy to be jaded and cynical, but I mostly am because of how much time I have pumped into this game and all the potential and promise it had. Compared to what I thought, in the first year or two, where this game would be by 2020, it's a disappointment. But when compared to what other multiplayer games have to offer, at that price (40 bucks main game, no paid DLC, still being updated), especially in the past few years, it's absolutely amazing.